Ideas & Trends; O Ye of Much Faith! A Triple Dose of Trouble

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

Published: June 2, 2002

THE past eight months have not been easy for believers. Roman Catholics learned that some of the princes of their church protected priests who sexually abused children. Muslims have seen their scholars condemned and their scriptures deconstructed for signs that Islam encourages terrorism. Jews in Europe have suffered a wave of anti-Semitic attacks as world opinion hardened toward Israel.

This is a rare moment in history, like a planetary alignment: three world religions simultaneously racked by crisis.

The nature of the trouble for each is different, but adherents of all three feel suddenly embattled and isolated. Atheists say ''I told you so'' and even some people of faith are asking whether there isn't something in the nature of religion itself that ends in corruption.

''This is so unusual as to defy any cyclical theory,'' said Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. ''Historians always say that everything goes through cycles, and that nothing is new. I'm saying, this one is new.''

Distinctive elements of all three religions have become a focus of criticism and a cause for humiliation, shame or defensiveness.

Revelations that Catholic cardinals, archbishops and bishops helped hide the abuses of pedophile priests and even moved them into new parishes have put a harsh spotlight on the faith's hierarchy and its celibate male priesthood -- the very attributes that distinguish Catholicism from other Christian denominations.

For Muslims, the crisis is one of doctrine. The 19 Muslims who crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and rural Pennsylvania on Sept. 11 set off the ideological equivalent of a house-to-house search for militants in Islamic schools, mosques and media. The Koran, which Muslims believe is the word of God as dictated to the Prophet Muhammad, is being picked apart for evidence that its passages advocate violence and intolerance. Some Muslim scholars and centers of learning are now under scrutiny for incubating militants. Leaders and scholars of other religions are asking why Islam never went through a modernizing Reformation that would lend it the tolerance that Christianity has embraced.

For Jews, the anguish is over a central part of their identity: their state and homeland of Israel. They have been battered by international condemnation and self-doubt to a degree not seen since the period following the massacres by Israeli-backed Lebanese militias in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps 20 years ago. Their crisis is not one of faith or doctrine, but of the viability of Israel -- and this for a people who since the sixth century B.C. have been reciting the psalm, ''If I forget thee O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither.''

THE triple shock may be hitting even harder because religion had been on a high. Ecumenism was in the air. In the last presidential election, both the Democratic and Republican candidates flaunted their reliance on Jesus. The country nearly elected Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, an observant Jew, as vice president. And the nation seemed to be relishing its religious diversity, with Hindu temples rising in the suburbs, Ramadan celebrated in schools and the Dalai Lama on best-seller lists.

''A lot of people thought that the religions of the world, in the era of the United Nations, would begin to find measures of accord,'' said Martin E. Marty, a religious historian and emeritus professor at the University of Chicago. ''Vatican II was a great document of affirmation of other religions, as was the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago. People in liberal pluralistic cultures thought this is a contagion that will spread, and will go with globalization.''

Interfaith events still occur, but now the focus is on religion as a conflictual force. A typical event, ''Beyond Violence: An Interfaith Dialogue,'' was announced for next month at the Kirkridge Retreat and Study Center in Bangor, Pa.

''Sometimes we feel as Muslims that some people were looking for an opportunity to attack Islam, and they got one, and they are using it to the best,'' said Naeem Baig, secretary general of the Islamic Circle of North America. The critics ignored the historical context, said Mr. Baig, that Muhammad was not only a spiritual leader but the military leader of a nation often under attack. ''Jesus, peace be upon him, never ruled a country,'' he said.

Every year some Catholic bishops meet with Muslim leaders for an interfaith exchange. At this year's gathering, at the Brooklyn archdiocese in April, the Muslims commiserated with their Catholic counterparts, said Mr. Baig.

''We told them, now the whole press is attacking Catholicism. Right now you look at any priest, and the first thing that comes to mind is, is something wrong with him or not. And as Muslims, we feel the same way,'' Mr. Baig said. ''People are staring at me and they are thinking I am some terrorist. We told them, we understand what you are going through.''

And the Jews, who despite an identity forged as a persecuted people, have been stunned at the depth of animosity directed at them as Israel struck back militarily at the Palestinians.

''At first when it was only political, most Jews were able to essentially ignore it as yet another chapter in the conflict between the Arabs and the Israelis,'' said Yosef I. Abramowitz, a writer and founder of Jewish Family & Life, a multimedia network based in Newton, Mass. ''Then when the anti-Semitism began spreading like wildfire, every Jew begins to take the conflict personally. So there's been a wake-up call.''

In addition to attacks from outside, Jews are themselves at odds, with some condemning those who suggest that the Palestinians may have legitimate concerns or that Israel may be, in any way, in the wrong.

This confluence of crises is ''highly unusual'' but not without precedent, said Karen Armstrong, a scholar of Catholicism, Judaism and Islam, and author of ''A History of God.'' But she had to reach a long way back -- from 800 to 200 B.C., a period of tremendous violence and upheaval on many continents, including China, India and the Middle East.

IN the midst of that ancient upheaval, she said, great spiritual thinkers forged the basic ideologies of most major religious traditions, from Confucianism and Taoism in China to Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism in India, to monotheism in the Middle East. The German philosopher Karl Jespers named that era the Axial Age because it was the axis of religious development.

''Those times were extremely violent and disturbed, and this made people question everything from scratch,'' Ms. Armstrong said.

''We've been undergoing our own sort of axial age, economically and technologically,'' she said. ''But we've not begun to meet this challenge in religious terms. We could use this suffering to create wonderful new religious systems, as the Buddha did, or we could retreat into the spiritual barbarism of hatred.''

As Professor Marty pointed out, the average person relates to religion not as a source of strife, but as a quiet, healing force, personified by the pastor who reconciles a divorcing couple, or the chaplain who delivers last rites to the dying.

''We're seeing now that religion is not an innocent force in the world,'' he said, ''but it shares the same problems as the rest of the world.